Kaila Charice

Cocaine is the new black

“I got some cocaine for us,” she said, with a wide-eyed smile of excitement.

It’s taken 25 years, but someone finally did it. Someone shocked me so hard — and not just any someone, a very close friend — that I was speechless and for the first time, felt awkward talking about drugs.

I’ve been around drugs since high school, but have never even smoked. I’m not one to judge – to each their own – but I feel I deserve that same respect.

I’m known amongst most of my friends as the one who doesn’t do drugs. In high school, I was best friends with a bunch of ravers who experimented (to say the least), and whenever I was with them and someone new would offer me something, they sort of protected me, I suppose. They knew it wasn’t my style and they respected it. Never did they make me feel pressured or awkward for my decisions. We all hung out together because we just had a good time.

I’ve been in plenty of situations where cocaine was available to me, but never one where someone had actively purchased it with me in mind. I didn’t know what to do. I was shocked.

I told my friend I don’t do cocaine and she looked at me sort of puzzled and suggested I try some. I let her know I’ve never touched it and don’t plan to – she backed off and just said she assumed I did it because I’m a model in Los Angeles.

Now that’s shitty.

I don’t assume a chemist is a socially awkward nerd who wears pants up to his rib cage and loafers from the 1940s, so I don’t see as it right to assume I would do drugs just because some people in my profession do.

That phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” comes to mind.

Assumptions are great (sarcasm!). I was introduced to a friend’s boyfriend recently and she made a point to tell me before I came over that she told her boyfriend I was “a super hot model, but smart too” because obviously people need to be briefed on the fact that I have a college degree before meeting me (more sarcasm!).

I guess I break a lot of molds. I’m a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jew who’s pretty but also has a college degree and works in the entertainment industry and has never done any drugs.

Back to drugs.

I’d really like to know when doing cocaine recreationally became the “norm.” It’s a drug. It’s a drug that’s very easy to get addicted to and overdose on. I don’t understand the intrigue.

“Maybe I’m hanging out with the wrong crowd,” I thought, when I realized I couldn’t think of more than a handful of my friends who have yet to try coke, but that’s not true. Most of my friends aren’t in Hollywood (where drugs are notorious). They’re working college grads or students — there’s no archetype it seems. It’s just the norm in 2014 that you’ve tried cocaine at least once.

I want to make it clear that I’m not judging people for their choices. I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that experimenting with hard drugs seems to be the new black.